


Elisha made the oil pour forth

by azarias



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hair Brushing, Infertility, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 12:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/pseuds/azarias
Summary: Miranda is a widow. Miranda has a husband, but not the one she wants. Miranda may have gone mad a month ago, but no one's had the guts to tell her.





	Elisha made the oil pour forth

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Rahne for the beta!
> 
> Contains a brief mention of period-typical child death, though not anyone we know. Can be read as a companion piece to [Thereto I plight thee my troth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10362177), but each work stands alone.

He calls himself 'Flint' now, and he is gentle with her. It makes her want to scream. 

Sometimes when Miranda lies awake at night, she turns it over and over in her mind, how to break James of that gentleness. Persuade him. Beg him. Destroy him and all the softness in him. He's beside her, or he's in the room across the hall, or he's out on his ship and she's here alone. They don't touch each other when they sleep; it's too hot for that, always, but she can feel his presence behind her back, in her bed, in her home. Hear him breathing.

In her mind, it all makes sense. She'll say, _This isn't what you want. This isn't what I want. Why should we do it? We should try to make each other happy._ Or growl, _Fuck me, fuck me, **fuck me** like you used to. Don't lock yourself away._ And he will. Her logic is impeccable. She knows both their desires. He will do as she asks, and she will feel the strength of him, his rough hands and his passion.

The words always die on her tongue when she tries to speak to him. He always touches her softly.

Thomas had been gentle. Her _husband_. 

He's been dead for seven months. They got the news five weeks ago. James has sacked four ships since then and spent two nights at home.

Miranda has a silver mirror, as tall as she is, propped up in the corner of her bedroom. It's as fine as anything she had in London. She hasn't asked what ship it came from, and she doesn't ever intend to. It had belonged to someone else; it might have been a gift for some other man's wife. Now it is hers, and in front of it every third night she sits and lets her hair down.

In London and in the country, she'd had a maid to do this for her, and it happened every day. It takes a long time, undoing the ties and pins, brushing it out, plaiting it again and pinning it back in place, after she's cleaned the day's dirt from her face and under her nails. She doesn't change her underlinens every day now; she'd have to wash them. Thinking about the work involved exhausts her. Easier to get used to feeling unclean. 

She could have a smaller house, a simpler one. Rid herself of furniture, break her clavichord into kindling, sleep in one room that is kitchen, bedroom, drawing room, like a little farmer's wife. Less to clean, less to care for, even her need for food would be lessened, if she cut her day's labors down so.

And then what home would James come back to? Would he come back at all, or walk into the sea forever? Was her weight alone enough to keep him anchored? Too great a danger to risk discarding all her tools. She had promised — she had sworn — the last words she'd said to Thomas — to keep James, and to see that he kept her — 

She could buy slaves to do the labor for her. The thought is hideous: their misery, her privacy. Both too great a sacrifice. 

James takes the comb from her hand. He runs his knuckles down her unbound hair, the backs of his hands more sensitive than his calloused palms and fingers. Her own hands are rough now, often red and sometimes peeling. Stronger than she had been. Sometimes she thinks it would not be so different to pick up a pistol and cutlass, to learn to climb the rigging. She reaches back and holds his wrist, holds him still, while looking at him in the mirror. His eyes are on her hair; they flicker up, blue like troubled water, and glance away as soon as they meet hers.

He had been shy, too, the first time she had had him. Until she taught him better. Now he acts like he's afraid of her, or of what he might do to her. With her. 

"I'll do it," he says. "Just rest."

 _I won't hurt you,_ he'd said, the first time he'd come to her from the ship still bleeding. It had been a prize worth fighting for. He'd been stabbed for it. _I won't hurt you,_ he'd said, while his legs were too shaky to hold him and the skin around his eyes was pale. Her needle had stitched the wound together and he hadn't made a sound, only said that, again and again, for three days while the fever simmered beneath his skin and sent his mind down shadowy paths she couldn't follow. She'd put him to bed and gone to unsaddle his horse. Then she'd sat beside him and wondered if he would die.

She says, "Thank you," and she lets go of his wrist.

He smooths the hair down her back with one hand while he combs it with the other. He's slow, so careful, stopping every time he feels a snag and unpicking it with patience. Not a twinge of pain for her. Strand by strand her hair slides through the teeth of the comb. Moment by moment, she lets the gentle rhythm wrap around her, her eyes sliding closed, her hands crossed in her lap, knuckles to palm. Sleepy here, in the night heat.

James's fingers are blunt and warm. The comb is ivory, inlaid with gold. She's had it since she was a girl, a gift from her doting father. Papa had liked that his daughter was pretty; he'd been proud when a man like Thomas had asked him for her hand. A good man, a rich man, who agreed that she was pretty and loved that she was bright. Miranda has always been surrounded by loving men.

Papa had never known just _how_ Thomas loved her. That was all right. It had taken her years to really understand herself, and to stop wanting things from her husband that Thomas couldn't give her. 

What he had given her: love, a lovely home, only the gentlest of touches, pride beaming from his eyes when he'd held her hand and listen to her argue. She'd held her own with everyone he brought to challenge her. His school friends, his cousins, her cousins. Men he'd met in Europe, men who held seats in Parliament, men who owned great libraries and decided how the world would be. Her cheeks had flushed, her heart had pattered. He had squeezed her hand and made a pleased noise in his throat. It was every bit as good as sex.

How greedy would she be, to say that wasn't enough?

So he had loved some of those men. Very well, she had loved some of them, too. Her body was an obligation to him, while his was a delight to her. He encouraged her to take her lovers, to glory in those appetites they couldn't satiate together. And he did his duty to her, when she asked, even once it became plain she could never fulfill her own.

There were no children, and Thomas had never blamed her.

Barren, useless as a wife; she would live and die and leave no blood of hers to live on into the future. But it had seemed a blessing, too. She would live _long_. Never to die in childbed like her mother, nor grow frail and crippled after years of bearing like Thomas's. Only time would thicken her waist, drag down her wrinkled breasts, wash the color from her hair. Her children would never live and would never die. Too many of her friends — she had held them after they had held a child of theirs, that had come from their body, held it for hours or days while it cried and coughed and shit itself in its long agony of dying. Their only comfort, _I can have another_.

Miranda could have none, and so lose none. Thomas would not turn away from her. He had the money, and childlessness was a good reason. Alfred would make it happen, if he had to buy the other half of Parliament not already in his pocket. Thomas had wanted children. Miranda had thought she would be a mother. But Thomas had brothers, nephews, cousins. There would be another earl of Ashbourne after him, no matter what Miranda failed to do. _Hang the title,_ and when he said it, he smiled, like the thought really delighted him. _I'll die some day and they can fight for it. No, better — I'll give it up. I'll take your name. We can be Mr. and Mrs. Barlow and go into an honest trade. How would you like to be an alewife?_

It was impossible, of course. Sometimes she thought Thomas could only deal in impossible plans. An earl's heir was born and he died an earl or an earl's heir. There was no way to separate the title from the man. Thomas could no more make himself ordinary by willing it than her hopes could make her pregnant.

Now Thomas is dead, and she is disgraced, and a pirate combs her hair. 

James doesn't want children, she's sure. She's never asked. What would be the point? What would Captain Flint do, if he thought she wanted a child? Steal one? No. He's never been quick to indulge her. She'd had to goad him that first time, spar with him and let him test her claws until his self-control was bleeding from the pinpricks that she'd left. Then he'd fucked her. Pulled her into his lap, thrust up into her like he was the one in control, like _he_ had been pursuing _her_. 

For a little while, there at the beginning, she had thought he wanted her, and his hesitancy was simply habit, politeness. Parochial morality. Yes, adultery was against the law, but most of Parliament was made of criminals. What use was a law that no one followed and that made everyone unhappy? Thomas had argued —

Well. It all came around to Thomas in the end. She'd thought James had been afraid to pursue _her_.

He'd fucked her like he really wanted her, which at the time had been enough. And now he doesn't have a choice. Neither of them have anyone else.

Papa was dead before it all went wrong, but her uncle Matthew had told her to come _home_. But he wouldn't have taken James, and she had made an oath. Just the once: _to obey, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance_ , and she had never, ever been asked by Thomas for that obedience until the last. So she had said yes, unthinking, not thinking she would never be able to say anything **else**.

Nothing so petty as death had parted them. Death was a mere assistant in her punishment. Her husband had gone to one prison, and she had gone to another. James was her jailer, as she was his.

Her hair is all combed out, soft and light. For a moment, she feels light. James puts the comb down and rests his hands on her shoulders, letting her hair drape across his hands. She opens her eyes; the expression on his face tells her nothing. Her chemise is loose and leaves her collar bare. His fingertips are very warm on her bare skin — everything in the Bahamas is wretched hot, but the vital heat of James's body is something different, energizing instead of draining. Slowly, his hand drifts down, down her throat and down her chest to cup her breast beneath her chemise. Hesitant. There's no heart in it. She turns her face from her mirror and presses her cheek against his stomach; she lets him hold her. Her nipples stand erect, his thumb stroking her, just the one — her chemise is soft cotton but it feels rougher than his hands, like her skin will bleed if she moves too quickly in it. 

It's not even pity, with James. Pity would have more to do with her. It's simply that James believes he has a _duty_ , so he'll provide for her, anything her body needs, her body's what's important, to have and to hold — even though _he_ had never sworn — 

She can't stand it. She tears his hand away from her, spinning to her feet with his wrist in both her hands. Not as strong as him — still her grip must hurt him, she's strong enough to bruise him now, she carries her own water and hoes at the dirt with her back and her knees aching, she tends to his horse when he's home. She feels his arm tensing but his face betrays nothing. She could break his wrist and he would say nothing, not one word of protest. If he thought she needed to.

None of this is real. How can this be real? She is drunk and dreaming, and Thomas is just down the hall. He'll laugh at her in the morning, while he carries in her breakfast tray with his own hands. Seeing her drink past _tipsy_ and into _poetic_ or _declamatory_ always makes him laugh. 

Wild, something bestial in her heart, she steps close to James until they are nearly chest-to-chest, his arm in a vice between them. She looks for _something_ in his face other than patience. The air she draws into her lungs feels raw like winter, impossible.

"We are widows, you and I," she says, and _that_ makes him feel something, _that_ makes his mouth move silently. Oh, how she hates him, that he takes even that from her: that grief that should be uniquely hers. 

His eyes are wet. Does he hate that she pities him? Too bad. He has no right to make demands of her. Her rival who couldn't understand that they were in competition. Well, now the judge of their contest was dead, and here they were together. How many men has James killed these past five weeks? How many women? How did it feel? _You think we’re different. We're not. We're exactly the same._

Seeing James on the edge of tears makes that animal in her purr, hungry and pleased. He can hurt, too. He has a way to unleash that hurt. Perhaps she can guide him. Perhaps she can share in it.

She bares her teeth. Demands his obedience: "When you see Alfred again, kill him." _For me. For Thomas. Never tell me which you choose. I already know his choice._

Alfred is on the other side of the ocean. James's eyes are wide — shocked? Eager? That's his concern.

She and Thomas had agreed to have no secrets between them, no jealousies. It had been easy — it had all been a lie and that lie was easy — he had loved his men and she had loved her men, and none of them had ever been important — somehow she had thought James would be unimportant, that she could seduce him for a game — be joyful with him and then go home and tease Thomas about it — and all along she had lied to herself, that she would have no jealousies, that if ever Thomas's happiness required it she would let him go with love — that he would _never_ love someone the way he loved James, the way he loved _her_ but carnal, like a husband, like half of his own self — 

— why hadn't Thomas told her that he could love like this? 

What fucking right does James have to grieve her husband as deeply as she does, except that he had been _their_ husband? Why is he allowed to take his ship and his sword and his bloody crew and carry out his wrath? And she sits here, labors here, waiting — 

She pushes him to her bed and climbs into his lap. Pushes him down and tears at his clothes. It makes him hard, her doing that. He likes it when she takes control. He closes his eyes and pretends something is happening, pretends someone is there, and she never fucking wants to know what's in his mind. She pulls him on top of her and makes him fuck her, claws at his back and his ass and the skin stretched tight across his face. It's good. He obeys her.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that happiness doesn't exist ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ?


End file.
